“Sarolta-Sandor remained under her father’s influence till her twelfth year, and then came under the care of her maternal grandmother, in Dresden, by whom, when the masculine play became too obvious, she was placed in an institute and made to wear female attire. At thirteen she had a love relation with an English girl, to whom she represented herself as a boy, and ran away with her. She was finally returned to her mother, who could do nothing with her, and was forced to allow her to resume the name of Sandor and to put on boy’s clothes. She accompanied her father on long journeys, always as a young gentleman; she became a roué, frequenting brothels and cafés and often becoming intoxicated. All of her sports were masculine; so were her tastes and so were her desires. She had many love affairs with women, always skillfully hiding the fact that she herself was a woman. She even carried her masquerade so far as to enter into matrimony with the daughter of a distinguished official and to live with her for some time before the imposition was discovered.” The woman whom Sandor married is described as being “a girl of incredible simplicity and innocence;” in sooth, she must have been!
Notwithstanding this woman’s passion for those of her own sex, she distinctly states that in her thirteenth year she experienced normal sexual desire. Her environments, however, had been those of a male instead of a female, consequently her psychical weakness, occasioned by degeneration inherited from an eccentric father, turned her into the gulf of viraginity, from which she at last emerged, a victim of complete gynandry. I have given this instance more prominence than it really deserves, simply because I wish to call attention to the fact that environment is one of the great factors in evolutionary development.
Many women of to-day who are in favor of female suffrage are influenced by a single idea; they have some great reform in view, such as the establishment of universal temperance, or the elevation of social morals. Suffrage in its entirety, that suffrage which will give them a share in the government, is not desired by them; they do not belong to the class of viragints, unsexed individuals, whose main object is the establishment of a matriarchate.
Woman is a creature of the emotions, of impulses, of sentiment, and of feeling; in her the logical faculty is subordinate. She is influenced by the object immediately in view, and does not hesitate to form a judgment which is based on no other grounds save those of intuition. Logical men look beyond the immediate effects of an action and predicate its results on posterity. The percepts and recepts which form the concept of equal rights also embody an eject which, though conjectural, is yet capable of logical demonstration, and which declares that the final and ultimate effect of female suffrage on posterity would be exceedingly harmful.
We have seen that the pronounced advocates and chief promoters of equal rights are probably viragints—individuals who plainly show that they are psychically abnormal; furthermore, we have seen that the abnormality is occasioned by degeneration, either acquired or inherent, in the individual. Now let us see, if the right of female suffrage were allowed, what effect it would produce on the present environment of the woman of to-day, and, if any, what effect this changed environment would have on the psychical habitudes of the woman of the future. This portion of the subject will be discussed in Part III of this paper.
III. The Decadence.
It is conceded that man completed his cycle of physical development many thousands of years ago. Since his evolution from his pithecoid ancestor the forces of nature have been at work evolving man’s psychical being. Now, man’s psychical being is intimately connected with, and dependent upon, his physical being; therefore it follows that degeneration of his physical organism will necessarily engender psychical degeneration also. Hence, if I can prove that woman, by leading a life in which her present environments are changed, produces physical degeneration, it will naturally follow that psychical degeneration will also accrue; and, since one of the invariable results of degeneration, both physical and psychical, is atavism, the phenomenon of a social revolution in which the present form of government will be overthrown and a matriarchate established in its stead, will be not a possibility of the future, but a probability.
That the leaders of this movement in favor of equal rights look for such a result, I have not the slightest doubt; for, not many days ago, Susan B. Anthony stood beside the chair of a circuit judge in one of our courthouses and, before taking her seat, remarked that there were those in her audience who doubtless thought “that she was guilty of presumption and usurpation” (in taking the judge’s chair), but that there would come a day when they would no longer think so!
Statistics show clearly and conclusively that there is an alarming increase of suicide and insanity among women, and I attribute this wholly to the already changed environment of our women. As the matter stands they have already too much liberty. The restraining influences which formerly made woman peculiarly a housewife have been, in a measure, removed, and woman mixes freely with the world. Any new duty added to woman as a member of society would modify her environment to some extent and call for increased nervous activity. When a duty like suffrage is added the change in her environment must necessarily be marked and radical, with great demands for an increased activity. The right of suffrage would, unquestionably, very materially change the environment of woman at the present time, and would entail new and additional desires and emotions which would be other and most exhausting draughts on her nervous organism.
The effects of degeneration are slow in making their appearance, yet they are exceedingly certain. The longer woman lived amid surroundings calling for increased nervous expenditure, the greater would be the effects of the accruing degeneration on her posterity. “Periods of moral decadence in the life of a people are always contemporaneous with times of effeminacy, sensuality, and luxury. These conditions can only be conceived as occurring with increased demands on the nervous system, which must meet these requirements. As a result of increase of nervousness there is increase of sensuality, and since this leads to excess among the masses it undermines the foundations of society—the morality and purity of family life” (Krafft-Ebing).